The Liberty of St Edmund

The Liberty of St Edmund

The Liberty of St Edmund was created by Royal Charter and bestowed on the Abbey of Bury St Edmunds in the first half of the 11th century by St Edward the Confessor, King of England (1003-66). It gave the Abbey considerable power and jurisdiction over eight and a half of the twenty-five hundreds listed in the Domesday Book for Suffolk. These hundreds went on to form the county of West Suffolk in 1889 which remained a separate authority until the Local Government Act of 1972 and the creation of Suffolk County Council in 1974.

Suffolk before Domesday

Hundreds were administrative areas likely to have been based on earlier land divisions which may explain the use of half and double hundreds. It has been suggested that the term hundred had a West Saxon origin and that it spread into East Anglia with Edward the Elder, King of the Anglo-Saxons in the AD 910s. It is thought to refer to an area that equated to one hundred hides (one hide being the land required by one family to support itself). The hundreds in East Anglia were considerably larger than those in other parts of the country and were usually named after its central meeting place rather than a local manor house which was the custom elsewhere. These meeting places were often features in the landscape such as fords and meres which gives us, for example, Lackford and Hartismere. Three of the Suffolk hundreds also contain the word “thing” meaning meeting place. Indeed, Thingoe was presumably so called as it was central to the west Suffolk hundreds and became a natural meeting place for that area. The noticeable difference in names and size of hundreds in this part of England may well be the legacy of the early Danish settlers and the subsequent control by Danelaw in this region. Suffolk was also unusual in the spread of its land ownership, having on one hand the wealth and power of the church controlling large parts of the county while on the other a significant number of minor landlords. Combined, these factors may explain why the powerful and influential Suffolk family dynasties did not prosper until after the Reformation and the Dissolution of the Monasteries.

Liberties: rights and responsibilities

The principle function of a hundred was to administer the law and keep the peace and a court was held as frequently as every three weeks. Additional courts were held for the whole of the Liberty and a county court would cover the remaining parts of the county not within the jurisdiction of the liberty. Holders of Liberties appointed a Steward to act on their behalf and the Office became the crucial link between the Crown and the Liberty. The remaining hundreds within the shire or county were overseen by a Crown-appointed shire-reeve or sheriff.

The rise of Bury St Edmunds and its Abbey

The town of Bury St Edmunds had its own Liberty. In AD 945 King Edmund I (AD 921-46) granted a large area of surrounding land, known as the Banleuca, to the monastery at Beodricsworth where the relics of St Edmund now lay. It was said that King Cnut, whose father King Sweyn was killed by the ghost of St Edmund after he attempted to tax the saint’s lands, later ordered that the boundary be fortified: a ditch was to be dug to protect St Edmund’s property from invasion by the royal tax gatherers, however no archaeological evidence for a ditch has ever been found. The boundary of the Banleuca went on to become the boundary of the Borough of Bury St Edmunds until 1934 when it was slightly enlarged to the west.

The first mention of the St Edmund’s group of hundreds is in connection with King Cnut’s wife, Emma, having been assigned this area, the eight and a half hundreds of Beodricsworth, as her dower, possibly from her first marriage to Aethelred in 1002. It is unclear when and from whom Beodricsworth takes its name although Lord Francis Hervey suggests a number of options. Perhaps there are some truths in those that collectively may explain why the remains of St Edmund were brought to the small monastery there and it later became known as Bury St Edmunds. The earliest record of the new name dates to 1065.

The early monastery was founded circa AD 633 by King Sigebert and in 1020 it was re-founded by King Cnut as a Benedictine monastery. It grew to become one of the wealthiest and most powerful religious houses in Europe with the shrine of St Edmund being a significant site of pilgrimage. Arguably, the most significant event in the Abbey’s history is the role it played in the creation of the Magna Carta in 1214. It is said that in October of that year the Barons, who were calling for King John to acknowledge and ratify King Henry I’s Charter of Liberties, swore an oath on the altar of St Edmund that they would succeed in their quest. King John finally signed the Magna Carta in 1215 at Runnymede in Surrey.

The Liberty of St Edmund

St Edward the Confessor, King Cnut and Emma’s son, visited the abbey on St Edmund’s Day 1044 and was entertained by Abbot Leofstan. The king, noticing that the monks were eating barley bread, had asked why the monks were not eating wheaten bread and the abbot replied that they could not afford to. The King responded:

The Abbot took advice and later requested the manor of Mildenhall and the eight and a half hundreds and all their liberties, which at the time were held by the king.

While it cannot be disputed that the Abbey accrued considerable wealth from holding the Liberty it is worth noting that no other large English abbey gave as much of its income to the poor.

The Abbey was also given an exemption from episcopal jurisdiction. However, these privileges often caused conflict and there were ongoing legal disagreements with the Bishop of Ely and the Archbishop of Canterbury. Small pockets of land, or indeed whole towns such as Sudbury, within the Liberty were classed as extra-hundredal and many disputes occurred. Perhaps this is what St Edward the Confessor was alluding to with the phrase “a great and continual labour” on granting the request.

Another Liberty existed in the county which, although smaller than St Edmund’s, was still of a significant size and had been granted to the Abbey of Ely in the 10th century. It comprised of the five and a half hundreds to the east of Ipswich, known first as Wicklaw then later as the Liberty of St Etheldreda. The remaining swathe of land through mid and north-east Suffolk, known as the Geldable, was subject to direct taxation by the king’s sheriff.

The Liberty after the Reformation

As one of the wealthiest monastic houses in England the Abbey of St Edmund was one of the last to be surrendered to the Crown during the Dissolution of the Monasteries. It was signed over on 4th November 1539 and all privileges including those of the Liberty reverted back to the Crown. The Suppression of Monasteries Act 1540 stated that ‘…all and singular the same Liberties, Franchises, Privileges, and temporal Jurisdictions, which the [said] late owners had, used, and exercised lawfully, by themselves, or by their officers or ministers…shall be by virtue of this present Act revived, and be really and actually in the King’s Highness, his Heirs and Successors…’. It went on to add that ‘…all manner fines, issues, amerciaments, and other profits and commodities…shall be claimed, levied, collected, and taken by such stewards, bailiffs, and other officers and ministers, as shall please the king’s highness, to name and appoint…’. Effectively, the Liberty continued to exist but was now held by the Crown. The magnificent Abbey itself was demolished and soon became a quarry for local builders to salvage stone that was then used in other buildings around Bury St Edmunds.

In the 19th century efforts were made to improve the efficiency of various countywide public services. The Liberties Act of 1850, and later the Local Government Bill of 1888, reduced the number of administrative functions of the Liberty. However, early proposals to create a single County Council for Suffolk were vehemently opposed and in 1889 the area of the Liberty became the county of West Suffolk. The ancient eastern boundary of the eight and a half hundreds was finally erased with the creation of Mid Suffolk District Council in 1974, part of the newly created Suffolk County Council.